Esports has quickly risen to become the next big thing – capturing hundreds of millions of viewers in singular events and racking up billions of hours of viewership time each month, a lot of capacity has been required to keep things moving, but how have the bigger mobile apps influenced the push for the growth of esports and online gaming as a whole?

(Image from mobile.thescore.com)

Streaming services – The biggest influence has been the introduction of streaming services to our mobile devices, particularly the bigger ones such as Twitch. With an average of 46 billion minutes of live streaming watched per month, that’s a huge amount of engagement, and with big esports tournaments occurring throughout the year too, it’s easy to see how many of these hours can be put into the bigger tournaments. With a suggested 35% of the Twitch audience using the mobile app for viewing, it is safe to say a big portion of that time is coming from mobile viewers alone.

Betting and fantasy – As with all sports, betting has become an enormous part of esports growth and has quickly become one of the biggest betting markets in the world. Mobile apps have played a part in this with the introduction of Pro Pick’Em apps that reward fans for correctly guessing the outcome of certain games, or certain statistics within the games, but larger sites such as Esports Betting Site have also been hugely successful in helping here too as regular betting continues to be a staple in the scene.

Social interaction – Of course the engagement is a large part of why esports had really taken off and our big social apps play a huge role in this. It’s easy to look at apps such as Twitter, Facebook, and TikTok because of their sheer size, but many of the professional players in esports have become well represented on these platforms and have been able to provide something that often isn’t seen from other professional athletes – a closer and more interactive relationship with their fans. Documenting their competition journey and often sharing it, these bigger apps have been a crucial part of the growth of esports and the personalities that are involved, and will continue to be something that distinguishes professional esports athletes from others, and may be something that becomes quickly adopted across the board as personal brand becomes that much more important in our digital world.

As a whole esports is still relatively young, having only been around in its current form for the past decade or so – as it continues to grow, the big apps that are associated with it will also start to move in a little more commonly and start to become a bigger part of the big tournaments – with a big focus on direct interaction and community for both offline and online events, there are a lot of big moves that can come here – and with the uniqueness of online events that aren’t seen in other sports too, introducing esports specific apps could be a gamechanger.